The Vanishment Page 11

  "Well . . ." She knew she could hardly send me away. "Perhaps you'd better come in. Will my father know who you are? I don't think I've heard him mention your name."

  As she spoke she stood aside to let me into the hall. It was a spacious, uncluttered vestibule, with plenty of light entering it through windows by the door and along the stairwell onto which it led. Mirrors reflected the light in groups of three. Across one wall hung a reproduction of a medieval tapestry—one of the Dame a la Licorne series from Cluny.

  "No," I said, replying to her question. "He will not have heard of me. I've come . . . perhaps you could tell him that I'd like to speak about a house he owns down in Cornwall."

  She looked sharply at me.

  "Petherick?"

  I hesitated.

  "Yes. Yes, that's it."

  "Oh, it's not for sale, I'm afraid. I wish it were, but

  there's some stupid clause in the deeds or something. It has to stay in the family."

  "No, you misunderstand. I don't want to buy it. But there are some questions I'd like to ask about it."

  "What sort of questions? Are you a local historian?"

  I shook my head.

  "No. No, I'm a writer."

  "Really? What did you say your name was?"

  "Peter Clare."

  Her eyes opened wide.

  "Not the Peter Clare? I've read a couple of your books, you know. They're up in my room. The Egyptian House, that was the first, and then Notebooks from Mars. I've got a copy of the one you wrote a few years ago—what's it called?—The German Shoemaker."

  "Austrian," I said. “The Austrian Shoemaker.” I smiled. It was rare for me to meet anyone who had heard my name, let alone read one of my books.

  "That's right. I haven't had time to read it yet. But I promise I'll start tonight."

  "What about the early ones? Day of Wrath, for instance?"

  She shook her head, a little troubled.

  "No, I . . . I don't think I'd like to read those. Because of. .."

  I knew what she meant. I had written in those books about my daughter, Catherine, and her death, about my grief. Some people found them hard to read.

  An awkward silence fell. I moved to retrieve the brief rapport we had achieved.

  "You'll enjoy The Austrian Shoemaker,” I said.

  We talked for a little longer, and she made me promise to sign her copies before I left. The ice had been broken. I breathed a silent thank you to whatever saint or deity it is who looks after authors.

  "I still don't really understand why you want to speak to Father about Petherick House," she said. "It's a horrid place. I only went there once, and I was glad to leave. I wouldn't spend a night there if they paid me to. I'm glad you aren't thinking of buying it."

  'I stayed there this summer," I said. "It was . . ." I hesitated. "I thought of writing some stories, maybe a novel based on it. But I need to know a bit more about its history."

  She looked at me steadily for several moments. Had she guessed that I was lying? I wondered how much she really knew about the house.

  "Father mentioned that someone had rented the house. He wasn't very happy about it, you know. It was never his intention to let it out." She let her eyes rest on me, as though about to say more, then seemed to think better of it.

  "Why don't you wait here?" she said. "My father's upstairs in his bedroom. I'll go up and tell him you're here. He won't have heard of you. He's not very fond of modern literature, I'm afraid, but I'll do my best to fill him in. I'm sure he'll see you."

  As she turned to go up the stairs I called after her.

  "I'm sorry," I said, "but I didn't get your name."

  She smiled sweetly.

  "Susannah," she said. "Susannah Adderstone."

  He greeted me with great politeness, showing me to a chair next his. The bedroom was large and comfortable, filled with the bits and pieces needed to make an invalid comfortable. He was dressed in a silk dressing gown, beneath which he wore a striped shirt and bow tie. His silver hair was immaculately combed, his cheeks clean-shaven. An ivory-handled stick leaned against the side of his armchair. I thought he must be in his early sixties.

  "My daughter tells me you are a famous writer, Mr. Clare."

  I shook my head.

  "Not famous. I've published a few books that have been well received. But I haven't written much in years. The public are fickle. And literary editors even more so."

  "I have no doubt. My own contact with such matters is strictly limited. I once published a collection of essays on Cellini. It sold a few copies."

  He paused and scrutinized me more closely. I sensed that he was uneasy about something. Even as he spoke he assiduously avoided meeting my eyes.

  "Susannah tells me you have some questions to ask about Petherick House. I understand you are the gentleman who was conned by an unscrupulous young clerk at my solicitor's this summer."

  I nodded.

  "I see," he said, drawing the words out. I noticed that his hands moved nervously on his lap. The backs of them were mottled, with dark veins. "That really should never have been allowed to happen. I had given the most strict instructions. The house was never to be lived in under any circumstances. The terms of my aunt's will required me to keep it furnished and in good repair, but that is all."

  He paused.

  "The police were here," he said. "I had nothing to tell them. They did not explain the reason for their interest in the house. I thought it was simply because of the fraud. But perhaps there was something more."

  I nodded. He did not look surprised.

  "My daughter tells me you wish to write about the house in one of your books."

  "Not exactly," I said. "I am less interested in the house than in what. . . inhabits it."

  He brought his hands together like crabs, locking the fingers as though to keep them still.

  "Inhabits. . .?’

  "Mr. Adderstone, I think you know very well what I mean."

  He seemed about to deny this, but, on the verge of speaking, closed his eyes. Thus he remained for upward of a minute. When he opened his eyes again, his expression had changed to one blended of fear and pity.

  "Perhaps," he said, "you would care to tell me what happened to you there."

  I told him everything. The whole story from start to finish, from our arrival and Sarah's disappearance, right through to the inquest. He listened to me in silence, like someone who has heard a tale repeated many times and yet continues to hang on every word in the hope that it may have changed. His eyes remained firmly fixed on a spot on the wall opposite.

  When I came to a halt, he said nothing for a long time. His vision seemed fixed elsewhere, not in the room at all. I let the silence grow until it filled every corner. It was a deep silence. I could hear my own breath in it. Finally, he lifted his sad eyes to me.

  "It is worse than I feared." He hesitated. I saw his eyes wander to a painting on the wall. I followed his gaze. The painting was of a very young woman in a white dress.

  "That is my first wife, Bryony," he said. "Did you know that she also disappeared at Petherick House?"

  "Yes," I said. "Mr. Pentreath mentioned it."

  "We had gone there shortly after our honeymoon. I thought. . . I foolishly thought that her presence there might drive out whatever evil remained. I even believed we could make a home there. But she hated it from the moment she set foot inside. We both thought the feeling would pass, but it grew stronger each day we stayed. Then, just as we had made our minds up to leave, she vanished. I never set eyes on her again."

  For a moment he was lost in memory. Then his eyes found mine again and he resumed.

  "I thought that perhaps it had ended by now. That you would have seen nothing and heard nothing. But I see that I was wrong."

  There was a long pause. I said nothing.

  "You say you were there two months?"

  "It became quiet," I said. "Not long after Sarah's . . . disappearance." I was not sure what word
to use. "Death" still seemed too final.

  "You mean her 'vanishment.'"

  "I'm sorry?"

  "That is what my aunt called it. Whenever she spoke of her sister. Susannah." He paused. A cloud of pain seemed to cross his eyes. "My daughter is named after her," he went on. "I gave her the name in an act of defiance. And I pray I do not live to regret it."

  He took a small handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow.

  "Is there anything I can get you?" I asked.

  He shook his head.

  "I shall be all right."

  There was a short pause.

  "You said Agnes referred to her sister's disappearance as a 'vanishment.' Did she mean anything particular by that?"

  "I think," he said, "that your wife's was a true vanishment. Like my Bryony's. It's an old term, one that the local people used to use. You don't hear it nowadays. I don't expect it was heard much in my aunt's day either. It referred to cases of mysterious disappearance, when a child or a young adult might go missing.

  The farmers said that an evil spirit had come for them in the night, and that this spirit was keeping them under the earth. Well, that's all old wives' tales. And yet there may be some truth in them."

  "Agnes thought that Susannah had been snatched away?"

  He shook his head slowly.

  "No. That was what she wanted people to think. She knew the locals, knew they were superstitious. The story of a vanishment kept tongues from wagging. No one asked too many questions about a thing like that. Not in those days. But my aunt knew better than that. She killed Susannah herself."

  Chapter 18

  "My aunt, Mr. Clare, was the most evil human being I have ever known. Believe me, I do not exaggerate. I did not know much of her as a child, but in the last year or two before she died, I visited her from time to time. I was a very young man then. When I was younger, I had been kept away from my aunt Agnes, but once I reached the age of twenty-one, I felt free to see anyone I wanted. She was really my great-aunt. My father was a grandson of Jeremiah Trevorrow's second wife by an earlier marriage. His father—my grandfather, that is—was brought up quite separately from the Trevorrows by his father's side of the family, the Adderstones.

  "During those visits she began to tell me a little of her past. She had not really talked with anyone in half a lifetime, and now she had someone to whom she could unburden herself. She still lived then in Petherick House. It was where she died."

  "But I thought she. . ."

  He shook his head.

  “She once tried to get away. The house in Truro had belonged to her father. He had once had business in the city that took him from home for days or weeks at a time. She kept the house, and now and then paid visits there. But she always went back to Petherick. Susannah would not let her leave."

  "I don't understand."

  The room in which we sat looked out over a quiet lane. Every so often there would be the sound of someone passing, or a car going through the market square. Then silence would fall again.

  "Something happened in 1887," he said. "She told me some of this before she died. The rest I found out for myself. Until now, I have kept it all to myself. But I do not think I can withhold any of it from you. You have suffered enough already. You deserve to understand a little. It may set your mind at rest.

  "It's important to go back a few years before Susannah's vanishment. Jeremiah Trevorrow had two daughters, each by a different wife. His first wife, Esther, died when Susannah was two. Jeremiah married Elizabeth-Jane Wilkes, the daughter of one of his tenants. She had been married once before, as I said, to my grandfather, George Adderstone. She and Jeremiah had a baby within the year. Four years separated the two girls. And more than just years.

  "Susannah, the older girl, was, by all accounts, a charming child and a lovely young woman. I have a photograph of her. I'll show it to you later. It seems that she was always her father's pet. He had loved her mother desperately, and only married Elizabeth-Jane to provide for her nursing. Agnes he did not love. She was as pretty a child as Susannah, but for one thing— a birthmark had disfigured her. Whether because of that or not, she had a crabbed, sour personality. Perhaps such a disfigurement would not matter so much nowadays, but it was a severe affliction then. Her father's treatment of Agnes and her mother twisted her and made her the wounded, spiteful creature she became.

  "This pattern was well established by the time the girls were in their teens. When Susannah was fifteen and Agnes still only eleven, Jeremiah's second wife died. By all accounts, Elizabeth-Jane Trevorrow had been a weak-willed woman. She had known of the rivalry between the two girls, of Agnes's growing hatred for her sister, and been either unwilling or unable to amend matters.

  "With her death, the balance within the household grew even more unhealthy. Susannah attached herself more closely than ever to her father. She was a beautiful woman, and more than one man had shown an interest in her, but from the time of her stepmother's death, she vowed to devote herself solely to Jeremiah Trevorrow's well-being. He was a selfish man, and took keen advantage of her devotion. Agnes did the fetching and carrying, but Susannah got the credit for it. I don't think she ever meant her sister harm. Quite the contrary. As I say, she was good-natured and perfectly unselfish. But Agnes grew to resent her situation more and more.

  "From the age of about sixteen, Agnes began to find consolation in the church. She was never, so she told me, a pious woman, but she was sick at heart and in need of a life outside Petherick House. In time she got a reputation for sanctity. Plain or blemished women often take that way out.

  "And then, when she was seventeen, she had a proposal of marriage. A new vicar had come to Tredannack a year earlier, and his parishioners had been urging on him the need to find a wife. He chose Agnes Trevorrow. Her disfigurement was almost a mark of divine favor. She accepted, and plans were made for a wedding in the following year.

  "It was a few months after that disaster struck. Susannah Trevorrow became pregnant. They tried to keep it in the family, but in a small place like that it was a hopeless undertaking. Within a short time the entire parish knew. There was a meeting between Agnes and her vicar. It was, of course, now out of the question for her to become his wife. It would have ruined him, and he was, it seems, an ambitious man.

  "Well, Susannah had her baby in due course. She would never say who the father was, but from certain hints Agnes learned—or at least convinced herself— that her own father was responsible. From that time, her hatred for both her sister and her father turned to loathing mingled with a desire for revenge.

  "The Trevorrows became even more reclusive than they had been. No one in Tredannack or St. Ives would receive them, nor did anyone visit them at Petherick House. The few servants they had abandoned them. The child, Catherine, took after her mother in looks and character. When she was almost three years old, Agnes discovered something that turned her mind completely. She found a copy of her father's will in a drawer. It declared Susannah to be Jeremiah Trevorrow's absolute heir. Petherick House, the house in Truro, and the lands 'round Tredannack were to be hers, while an annual allowance—a pittance—had been set aside for Agnes to live on. In the event of Susannah's death, the entire property, together with whatever capital was kept in the bank, would pass to Catherine, to be administered for her by trustees until she was twenty-five. Three deaths stood between Agnes and her freedom. And there was every reason to believe that Catherine might find a husband and have children of her own, to whom she would, naturally, leave her inheritance.

  "Jeremiah Trevorrow died in February of 1887. The death certificate declares that he passed away from 'natural causes.' In fact, his daughter Agnes had been administering tiny doses of poison to him for several months. She let a little time go by after that before striking again. I think she had already some idea of the testimony she planned to give at the eventual inquest, to the effect that Susannah had been depressed following her father's death and so committed suicide. The months that el
apsed between Jeremiah's death and Susannah's disappearance were intended to make the suicide more plausible."

  Adderstone stopped speaking. I could see that something troubled him. Outside, silence had fallen over everything. A door opened and closed downstairs. I waited for him to resume.

  "She was an old woman when she told me this," he said, "but it was as though it had happened the day before. Her memories would not give her peace. She did not tell me all at once, you understand. These were things she had kept locked away in herself for well over sixty years. They did not come into the light easily.

  "She did not want to risk using poison again, for fear of exciting suspicion. Instead, she obtained a key to her sister's bedroom on the top floor. One evening, while Susannah was in the room, Agnes locked her inside. Catherine was with her. Agnes had already prepared two large bolts with padlocks to hold the door fast. She screwed them into place, ignoring the cries from inside. She had already nailed the window shut from outside.

  "When the door was fastened to her satisfaction, she went downstairs and made herself a meal. She remained downstairs for four weeks. Not once in all that time did she venture to her own bedroom. From time to time, she told me, she could hear her sister shouting. And more than once the sound of the child weeping, day after day, until silence returned. She told me that at such times she would sit with her hands over her ears, waiting for the crying or the shouting to subside.

  "At the end of the fourth week, she went up to the room and unbarred the door."

  He stopped speaking. I saw him shudder, as though he could see in his mind's eye the scene that had met Agnes Trevorrow's gaze when she opened that door. He had had many years to think about it, to dream about it.

  "Susannah was still alive."

  "Alive?"

  "Please, let me go on. This is not easy for me. I say that Susannah was still alive. She had broken a pane of glass in the window and placed pots on the windowsill outside. That had allowed her to collect a little water when it rained. Luckily, it rains quite often in Cornwall. But having water had only served to prolong her agony. Without food of any kind, Susannah and her daughter had grown pitifully weak. In spite of her mother's attentions, the child had succumbed.